Dear friends: hereby my report concerning the Waldzell
meeting
This report is not for the weak of heart or those who believe that
harmony is the only key. For those who believe in harmony and good intentions Waldzell 2008 probably was a great event. It was important for
me, but for entirely different reasons, some very personal and introspectively.
So bear with me, I wrote this for myself and my friends who were present and a
wider circle that could not. So it’s a personal account, not a journalistic
one. But do share it, or comment if you like.
The Waldzell meeting has the stated mission: Waldzell inspires people to
leverage their full potential. Guidance is found in old wisdom, the rich
knowledge of primitive people and the findings of modern science. Inspiration
is found in art. We strive for a deep understanding which can offer a solid
foundation for sustainable integration in our everyday life. Gained insight
should be made available to all people and be utilized by business, education
and politics.
It’s an ambitious and somewhat elitist and do-gooders gathering in an
impressive abbey near
After attending the Waldzell meeting it took
me a few days to digest and a visit to Vanja Palmers
and Brother David’s Hause der
Stille was a great help. A great
place in the
To put it in perspective, I needed that badly, as Waldzell
definitely didn’t live up to my expectations. It was a meeting where too many
people came to prove something, themselves or their theories. I realized, and
that in itself is an inspiration, that to prove oneself or one’s ideas is not
particularly fruitful. It takes a lot of time and yields no insights, and yes I
myself do like to play that game too. So in that respect Waldzell
was a mirror and as me and my friends are planning some kind of academy www.lucsala.nl/academy.htm with
similar goals, bringing spirituality and science together in an original wisdom
setting, it was a good lesson.
I was hoping to meet great teachers and inspiring people and in a way I
did, but it was a bit superfcial. What about the root
causes of the mess this world is in, solving “old problems” like most of the socalled “architects of the future” at the meeting do by
social entrepreneurship, is in a way just taking care of symptoms. What are the
deeper, more general concerns, what are the root
causes of our current problems. Before I came to Waldzell
I prepared a note on this, pointing at fear and defusing fear (see www.lucsala.nl/fear.htm).
Coming to Waldzell I believed Herman Hesse’s Glasperlenspiel was the
core inspiration, a meeting of elite students (of life) and some “worldly”
guests. Could this be the place to find new connections, a new coherence, a
bridge between those dualistic notions in myself and in the world, between
science and spirituality? Although, there was this nagging thought about Joseph
Knecht, the magister ludi
who at the end gave up Kastalia and Waldzell to reenter the real
world, being tired of the empty form he gradually experienced.
‘…nichts entzieht sich der Darstellung durch Worte so sehr
und nicht ist doch notwendiger, den Menschen vor Augen zu
stellen, als gewisse Dinge,
deren Existenz weder beweisbar
noch wahrscheinlich ist, welche aber eben
dadurch, dasz fromme und gewissenhafte
Menschen sie gewissermaszen als seiende Dinge behandeln, dem Sein und der Moeglichkeit des Geborenwerdens um einen Schritt
naeher gefuehrt werden.’
Now in this text it becomes clear that there are “things” one cannot
prove but if they are treated as real, can help to come closer to understanding
and being. And there are those things, whether we call them new science or
telepathy, belief or spiritual awareness, and our world is
in dire need to work with them.
But what did I see? Once more, as this is what I noticed so clearly, many
people not only trying to prove that such things are possible or even likely,
but trying to prove themselves in the process. What a waste of energy, what a
waste of possibilities, in many a lecture the ego-trip
was all there was. And don’t take this as a negative judgement, I can see that
through the egocentric stories or the self serving and sometimes pedantic
comments shine talents and great analytic minds. But scoring ego-points is not
what breeds understanding and growth. Neither does unconditional support and
acceptance. Love is the key, but dialog and Socratic confrontation is what Waldzell needed and mostly lacked. I liked the motto of
Nina Martinovic, one of the participants; “No that’s
worth a thousand Yes”. Where was the official coyote, the advocate of the
devil, using Wolf Singer as the odd-man out wasn’t enough and a bit unfair too.
John DeMartini would have been a great antidote to
the complacency, as moderator or debater, and would I like to challenge him and
be happy to loose the argument too!
There were great moments, no doubt, and combining the thoughts and
insights of Bruce Lipton, Don Hoffman and Rupert Sheldrake helped me a lot to
hone my picture of what the new sciences can do and not do. Wolf Singer was a rational
contrapunkt in this. I did spend some time with him
in my role as telepathic/ clearknowing medium and was
allowed to see that his “rational” stance and defence of the scientific method
are just one layer of a sensitive and honest human with great talents.
Combining their insights and honouring their audacity I realised that
reality as we see it is just an illusion as the old wisdom taught us through
the ages, but that science now supports that. Truth is subjective, survival and
efficacy more important than the truth or deep reality. So science and the
physical world are illusions anyway, and when Rupert then challenges the laws
of nature he leaps far beyond his now somewhat stale morphogenetic fields. What
if he would focus on using the capacity of the mind (or rather consciousness)
to actually change our world (perceived or real) and not spending so much time
trying to prove what we all know at some level. The same goes for Don Hofmann, using
socalled scientific methods to test Paramahamsa Prajnanananda didn’t
yield any result. Why spend energy to convince the scientific world of
something that lies in another realm, a dimension were intention is paramount
and just proving or disproving paranormal powers has little meaning. I told him
that asking real questions, not experimenting but asking for real answers would
yield meaningful results and I am willing to cooperate, but not as a guinea pig.
Look at www.lucsala.nl/psimatrix.htm
or www.lucsala.nl/psyche.htm for an example, data obtained by esoteric
(dowsing) means, but meaningful because of the structure and methodology. Use
the powers of “gifted” people to choose between the various models for string
theory, to find the root causes of many diseases etc. Progress very often
results from unexplainable incidents or accidents, Albert Hofmann’s LSD and
John DeMartini was an inspiration, not because
his rather American and egoboosting fast talking approach that reminded me of the NLP evangelists, but
because his underlying worldview, cosmology and psychological models were so
“rounded” and deep. A stage therapist, at first site a snake oil salesman and
that was, alas, the impression he made on the public at the
There were other inspiring speakers, but not many, too many messages I
have heard before, like the whole feminist rap, did I understand well that Obama should win because he has developed his feminine side
so well? I think that McCain will win exactly because of all this new agey support for Obama, in times
of crisis fear rules and supporting that fear actually supports and feeds the
other side. Woman’s circles are a great idea, but as old as the world and why
not learn from those men’s circles through history, from round tables to
Masonic lodges. And if we face an even more serious crisis in the future, we
need leaders with male energy. It’s nice to hope for more male/female
integration, but isn’t the dominant model in society (and genetics and
theology) a result of external and environmental circumstance, as Bruce Lipton
so eloquently put. He made clear that our genetic traces show we went though
major challenges before, but did survive because our DNA adapted. We face
another major challenge now, but should free ourselves from the beliefs and
models we inherited from our parents, the world. Bruce made clear we are free,
that our genes (DNA) will follow us, we are masters of our development if we
can see that we can choose our environment, the genes have enormous capacity to
adapt. Not slaves of the value systems we absorbed in our hypnagogic
early childhood, but masters of our future. He was inspiring, pointing at
biological micro-processes that are as creative as the most advanced human
mind, that we are as humans a mere collection, an aggregate and intentional
cooperation of those trillions of cells, just as society is an aggregate of
billions of humans. A sobering thought, but he turned that into inspiration,
into a call to courage. John DeMartini added the
psychological insight and pointed at tools to actually change our belief
systems.
For the rest, Waldzell was a bit boring for me,
it died in harmony and begging for money. It was all so politically correct, so
nice, so well thought out, so quasi perfect, up to the nice mix of races and
colours on the podium, giving everybody lots of support, allowing the public to
support their hero’s and sometimes overtly publicise their own cause. I was
disappointed in the quality of questions, as I hoped this would be an audience
that would dare to disagree, to discuss, but most of what the floor added was
appraisal and irrelevant personal comments. The many spiritual people around
were nice, made the atmosphere kind and graceful, but on stage added little to
make the motto “The time is now” a reality. In personal contacts they were
great and inspiring though and that’s a great contribution too. I made a trip
with Father Martin to visit the most holy place in the Abbey church,
the spot were the poorest and most needy peasant would hide in the back of the
church. That’s were the core message of Melk Stift hit my personal motto: “I am only different as I have
not yet learned to be the same.”
Now I understand that not all the participants can be of the same level,
but wasn’t that what was implied by what looked like a selection-process? That
in fact most of the participants did not pay the rather high fee and I got the
impression were there as friends of the organisers and indeed a claque. The
moderators did their best, but could not hide the fact that most relevant
comments came from a few of the speakers, not from the participants.
Now I could give many examples of where the meeting kind of put form
over content, harmony before dialogue or dissent, material and even monetary
concerns before spirit and cooperation. I will only mention the strange paradox
of accusing media in general of manipulation and at the same time allowing severe
media overkill, the photographers and camera people were so dominantly present
even at the ritual and sensitive moments, that it was hard to take one’s mask
off.
And taking our masks off, showing our true self, in all vulnerability
and in a playful spirit is what brings about progress, growth and love. The
world is already full of formal conferences, where people go by the book and
were one agrees to agree, where we have standing ovations for mediocre
performances, where the thing dies in harmony.
I don’t want to be negative about those young kids doing their best in
the Architect of the Future program, but I have seen lots of intelligent and inspired
projects elsewhere, I don’t need to travel to Melk to see another bunch of
social entrepreneurs invited as token proof of the generosity of the
organisation. They were fine people tackling real problems, but not architects
of the future, not visionaries outlining the problems of the future, not
architects shaping the structure and underpinning of our future world. If one
wants to give some young outsiders access to what the Waldzell
meeting really could be, great, but don’t spend half a day and a lot of energy
giving them a platform to sell themselves and their ideas and in fact seek
financial or other support. The same goes for the journalists of the future, I
wasn’t impressed with what came out of that, nice to have some kids around, but
there are good schools to learn journalism and there were enough professionals
around anyway.
In short, Waldzell is, in my most negative
mood, a dead duck, I guess financially as well as spiritually, it has served
certain purposes for a while, like Waldzell in Hesse’s book did, but has now feels to me like an
institution that mostly serves the ego’s and material ambitions of participants
and organisers.
I do hope, in my positive mood, that the great contacts and
interpersonal communication I (and I hope we all) took back from the Waldzell meeting 2008 will help us to grow and develop,
that the inspiration that will bear fruit and action.
All this is not an easy message and I hesitated, rewrote and adapted it,
but here it is. As I believe in perfection in everything, the world and our
lives being a great school, Waldzell was and is also
a perfect lesson in many respects, for which I thank all that took part in the
experience.
Luc Sala
sala@dealerinfo.nl